I would pierce you heart with an arrow,
One and two and three,
I would pierce your heart with an arrow,
But you seem impervious to me,
I would pinion you to the truth,
Four and five and six,
I would pinion you to the truth,
But you seem to like playing tricks,
I would let you know I love you,
Seven, eight and nine,
I would let you know I love you,
But you knew that all the time.

the-man-who-stepped-out-of-time1

Click on the link to download an illustrated piece about landscape, space and memory. 

the-man-who-weighed-shadows2

The Factory of Forgetting

1.0 The Smell of Wet Concrete

She started walking after it all went wrong. She didn’t see why she should sit in her flat and wait. Wait for what?
So she came to know the streets around her south London home in detail. Under low clouds and on black, damp, pavements she walked. The heath flat around her and the crows hopping on the grass oblivious to her presence. She walked towards Greenwich and caught a smell of yeast, a deep pungent rolling trail of it sweeping across the heath.
Raising her head, she took a deep draught of it in and smiled to herself: it came from the Tate and Lyle factory that refined sugar just upriver from Greenwich town centre. The Thames path went besides, actually it went through it. She had walked it once with Oliver, they had looked up at the towers holding sugar and the Bladerunner spires of the refinery belching gouts of blue flame flickering in the night sky. And that smell. Not the sweetness of sugar but the dank stench of rotten fruit.
They had gone to a restaurant and stared into each others eyes. That old old story.
A Crow jumped out of her way with a squawk as she turned to walk back to Blackheath village. The smell of the refinery made her think of her father and

1.1 Of Turpentine

She was back in her father’s studio, watching him paint. He very slowly and very carefully stepped towards the easel and as he did so he selected the right colours from the palette in his left arm and with the brush now loaded (aqua marine, yellow ochre, and her favourite, burnt sienna) he with a small graceful movement applied the paint to the canvas. Then he would step back, look hard, and repeat the whole sequence.
When he had had enough her father would dip the paintbrushes in an old jar filled with turps and then swirl them around digging the colour out of the bristles until the turps was a dirty grey colour. That smell was her father, spiritous and acrid, the turps in her memory equalling his love for her. If she smelt the other studio smells, the varnishes he used and the oil paint itself, anywhere in her adult travels she was instantly a little girl again. Looking up as he stepped back and stepped forwards again and again. He gave her a random selection of his art books and she was happy to sit there for hours flipping the pages and staring at the pictures, occasionally looking up at her father before looking back down at the book again. She said nothing. He said nothing.
She remembered being happy then.

1.2 Stray Perfume

And also remembered suburban dinner parties with her mother holding court, the smell of Beef Wellington and candles. The couples drinking wine and talking loudly and the screech of female laughter. And their perfumes, each woman wearing a powerful concoction bought dearly at the Army and Navy or Allders in Bromley. The perfumes met and coagulated, congealed; they filled the house until she and her sister shook their heads with wonder at the splendour of it all. How sweet it must be to be an adult.
Two things told her that Oliver was cheating on her. One was the look she saw pass between Oliver and her sister. A look filled with longing and lust.
The second was a few weeks later when she was filling the washing machine and caught a scent, a few stray molecules of perfume on a collar of one of his shirts. She checked further and it was on his cuff as well. She knew the perfume.
Mitsouko by Guerlain. Her sister wore it. It was weeks since they had seen her. It took two hours to get the truth out of him later that evening. He left the next day.
She started pounding out his memory from the soles of her feet, leaving his poisonous residue, on damp pavements, under low clouds.

Born into a certain time
A certain place
Birthed into history
Terminus Est
The line that divides
Sharp as a swords blade

In the shadow under the woods
I see the potency
Ability to make and re-make
No eyes to see
Stepping on bracken
As my ancestors before me

And into the darkness
That created you and me
I walk on black earth
Helios teases
A crow croaks in a clearing ahead
Someone waits, silently

When I am far from home I think of her,
And am made happy,
Closing my eyes to sleep, I think,
And am made happy,
I hear her voice slipping down my spine,
And am happy,
In her face I see many faces,
And am happy,
In her eyes I read her history,
And am happy,
Forbidden to touch, I stroke her neck,
And am happy,
Knowing the past, no part in her future,
I am happy,
Out of reach and out of time,
A longing that heats my blood like wine,
Making me,
Happy.

 
I saw her through darkened windows
Between motorway headlights
The streetlamps from a train window
God between the lights
Her memory stands beside me
As I wait and watch,
planes
Sliding towards Heathrow
A platform in a suburb

Her memory is beside me
On these strange journeys
Sits beside me in the carriage
Outside:
I watch the streetlamps
And the darkness in between
I see her in the night
My fingers on the window
As the train powers on

I told her I wasn’t good enough
Stroked her cheek
All the waiting
In broken-down south london
Dives
Posters peeling
Barmen taking their time
All that waiting over
No more need to hide
The gentle rain washes
Fine as thought
Telling her I wasn’t good enough
I meant;
She wasn’t

The streets are dark, damp with low cloud,
Far away a steeple, the suburban hills grey,
Trees shelter the rooftops,
And the hiss of traffic.

He walks beside me, step for step,
Not feeling the cold, not feeling anything,
He a ghost, I half a ghost,
Dead inside, South London comatose.

My Mother gave me him, in a book,
Bright pictures, the holiness distilled,
I believed then, I believe now,
That the streets are dark, the clouds low.

One step for one, we step beside,
The streets warm, the sun bright,
His arm around my shoulders,
A ghost lost in time, he smiles at me.

My friend sails that river, lost,
To us, that knew the man,
Now made into dust,
On dark streets beside me, we walk.

He regarded the human race as insects; accorded them the emotional weight of clouds. He had reasoned long ago that he wasn’t from here, he was an alien anthropologist that had been marooned, his only recourse to hold to logic and keep observing.

He was always looking up in fascination at the culture of the clouds above, a culture that he alone seemed to notice. Clouds as mountains; the sun on twisting spires of dense whiteness, the brooding, sombre, shading underneath. Darkness of deed and thought. Light sun-bleached playfulness. Clouds as cities; as separate and complete unto themselves as the world of the ants. Clouds birthing, growing, swelling, dispelling. He watched them and their shadows as they traversed the heath. He walked, they flew. He wondered now and again what a cloud dweller would make of the people down here, would he lean over and peer at us through a pair of binoculars? Would he notice yet another ant figure as it walked the heath, the only one below who ever looked up? He had to restrain himself from the urge to wave at the sky. 

The clouds pleased him.

People, however, did not. And if one did, one insect in this termite city, he accorded them the privilege of being almost a cloud. The transience of them. Their lack of inherent meaning. Blank spaces that he had decided not to project himself upon. Clouds but without shadows.

So there he was trying to keep his hands clean; but of course this world is a dirty one, and dirt has a way of finding its way in somehow.

She spoke to him and he was so unaccustomed to people talking to him that he didn’t hear her, or rather, couldn’t put meaning to the sounds he was hearing. The concept of talk evaded him.

“ Sorry? ” He said.

“ Are you? ” 

“ I mean I didn’t hear you.” He said.

She looked at him with cool blue eyes, amused though he wasn’t equipped to notice. He looked at her and thought, she is a foreigner here, as am I. He didn’t know why he thought that, but of course he was right. He was usually right.

“ I said that it’s nice to see you.” He smiled at her when she said this because he thought he was meant to, the language he was using wasn’t his native one, even in that he was always exact with what he said and the words he chose. He wished to avoid any chance of double meanings, any chance of confusion. If he could have spoken in mathematical equations or binary code he would have done. He was even more careful when he used his adoptive tongue, after a few years of effort to say exactly and only what he meant he had decided that this language was so soaked in inference and shadings and layers and signs that he had given up. He resorted to saying as little as possible. It seemed safest. 

He handed her the money, she gently lay his coffee on the counter before him. He took it and sat on a stool by the window and lit a cigarette. He watched the people and cars go by and sipped his coffee. He thought that in about fifteen minutes it would rain. He was right. 

The next day, after his walk, he went into the coffee shop and she said the same thing to him.

“ It’s nice to see you.” He smiled.

The next day she said it again. This time he turned around to face the mirror that ran along one wall of the coffee shop and looked at himself. He was tall, thin, short black hair, clean shaven, dark eyebrows. He looked plain he thought. He looked harder at himself, studied every line, every crease in his long black woollen coat, the folds in his blue shirt. His black eyes staring back at him.

“What exactly do you mean when you say it is nice to see me?” He asked her. He sounded genuinely puzzled. He was.

“ I mean that you are part of my routine. You come in at exactly twenty to four virtually every day. When I see you I am glad because it means I only have twenty minutes to go before I finish here.” 

“ Ah, I see.” He thought he understood now but for once he was utterly wrong.

“ I leave here every day when you leave. You quite often hold the door open for me. Haven’t you noticed?”

“ No. “ He said. He looked down at the froth on his coffee on the counter before him and then looked back up, into her eyes. He said it again. “ No.”

She smiled at him and shook her head. 

“ Here, take your coffee and go and sit down. It will only get cold.” She handed the cup to him and he did as she said. He sat on a stool, lit a cigarette and watched the world outside the window. When he was about to drink the last of it and leave someone put another one in front of him and sat down beside him. She put her own coffee next to his and looked out of the window.

“ Can I have a cigarette please? ” She said. He gave her a cigarette and lit it for her and when the flame licked the end of the tobacco he thought: be careful, be careful, you must choose your words very carefully. He imagined a tight-rope walker making their first step. The sway of the wire. He stared at her as she inhaled her smoke, the wide cheekbones, blonde hair cut short but fashionably just so, her blue eyes, wide mouth, her lips. She didn’t wear much make-up. As he looked he thought: she is beautiful, really, very beautiful. He noted it, it was a factor. 

Her eyes locked onto his as he looked at her and didn’t turn away, she smiled slightly to herself and held his gaze, he stared without thinking-as if he was studying an interesting specimen, a rare find. What she thought of this we will never know as an angels thoughts are between herself and God. 

“ Shit!” He said loudly, his cigarette had burnt down to his fingers without his noticing. The sudden pain made him realise that he had just sat there and watched her without saying a word. “ I’m sorry. I think I may have just been rude. I was staring.” He sipped his coffee and glanced out of the window. Crows walked across the heath pecking at the short grass and calling to each other. He saw the wind lift and play with their glossy black feathers as they bent and fed. 

“ Stare if you like.” She flicked the ash off her cigarette. “ You know, I see you walking the heath every day. Almost every day. ” 

“ Yes. ” He couldn’t think of any other response. A small part of his brain was trying to place her accent. Scandinavian? German? Dutch?

“ You look like a Crow, walking along in your black coat, you look up a lot. You seem to be deep in thought. ” 

He thought very carefully what to say and then spoke.

“ I am not conscious of it but I suspect my brain is deep at work all by itself. I just put one foot in front of the other. ” 

“ Like self-hypnosis. ” She said.

“ Perhaps.” He replied.

“ Can I come for a walk with you? ” She asked. He was so shocked that he almost said the first thing that came into his head, which was no. But then he thought that he could give no real reason why. So he told her the truth.

“ You’ll be bored. I just walk. ”

“ That’s for me to decide. ” She laughed to herself. 

“ Well, er, yes then. “ He said and in saying it puzzled himself. She was beautiful but beauty did not move him, he had fully comprehended his own weaknesses long ago and killed his sex drive, his lust. So he thought. 

“ Meet me here at four tomorrow then. ” She said. He smiled at his own foolishness and stood up. A moment of panic gripped him and he said.

“ I don’t talk much! ”

She had stood up as well and as they walked towards the door she said.

“ Good. ”

She held the door open for him and he stepped out into the crisp autumn air. His feet seemed to tickle, as if he was slipping on ice. She turned from him and walked away further into the village, she wore blue jeans and a short leather jacket that fitted tightly. She was tall and walked with elegance, she had grace. Far too quietly for her to hear he whispered to himself.

“ I don’t know your name. ” She was far along the path by then, just before she passed from his sight he saw her turn around and stand still for a moment, then she turned away and walked on.

He spoke to a crow that was pecking at the grass nearby.

“ These humans. They puzzle me. ” The crow ignored him, as is the way of crows. 

He waited outside the coffee shop the next day at exactly four. He didn’t want to go in and wait for her inside, somehow that didn’t seem right. At five past four she came out of the door and looked around, seeing him leaning against a wall and smoking she gave him a truly wonderful smile. He didn’t notice. He stepped away from the wall and stood next to her.

“ What is your name? ”

“ Anna. And yours? ”

“ Stephan. ” She held out her hand, for a second he just stared at her gloved fingers and then he held out his own bare thick fingered hand and shook hers.

“ Let us walk. ” He said and strode off. Anna stayed still until he realized she wasn’t with him, he walked back to her and looked down at her.

“ Stephan, don’t forget you are a gentleman. ” She linked her arm through his and looked up at him. He was just slightly taller than her. She was wearing a blue knitted bobble hat and a blue scarf. “ Now let us walk. ” She said. And they walked. He thought to himself that she was right, he had forgotten that he was a gentleman, or had been once. He couldn’t see it, and didn’t realize he was doing it, but for the first time in six years a genuine smile was on his lips. 

He followed his usual route around the heath, she walked slower than he and as they were arm in arm it took longer, he said nothing. She said nothing. He stopped occasionally to look up at the clouds or across the heath at the Crows, when he stopped she looked at him as he became absorbed in whatever he was looking at but said nothing. They took an hour to arrive back at the coffee shop where he just stopped and looked down at her. She said nothing but looked around and smiled to herself. There was an awkward silence. His brain was on pause; he thought of nothing but let his instincts take over. 

“ Now that was boring for you wasn’t it?” He said.

“ Far from it, most enlightening.”

“ Oh.”

“ Same time tomorrow? ” She said and looked into his eyes.

“  If you wish it, that would be, er, nice.” He smiled at her and gave a short bow of his head and walked off across the heath. He had some thinking to do.

They walked the next day and the next, indeed every day for a week. He said little or nothing and she walked beside him, content to be next to him. He didn’t know it but he emanated calmness and made those around him relax. Perhaps because he was an empty human, his psyche dumped and his soul quiet. A mirror polished bright. 

One day they sat on a bench in point hill park and looked at the view before them, he sat with his hands flat on his knees staring at the city before them. Anna took one of his hands and held it; feeling his knuckles, the warmth of his blood. He looked at her and smiled and then looked up at the clouds. 

She then asked the question that she had to ask.

“ Why are you like this Stephan? What happened to you? ”

He let go of her hand and stood up. 

“ Stephan? ” She said.

He walked away over the lush green grass to the park gates and disappeared. Anna sat still as he vanished, full of anxiety. Wanting to follow him but knowing it would do no good.  

She looked at the grass and then at the far, far off dome of St Paul’s and cried. She didn’t know why.

It wasn’t difficult for her to find him again, after all he was nothing if not a man of routine. As he walked across the heath the next day Anna fell into step beside him and took his hand.

“ Sorry.” She said. 

“ Why? ”

“ Because I obviously upset you.” 

“ No, I just had to think. I have been thinking. All night.”

“ What about? ”

“ Your question.”

“ And what is your answer? Only if you want to answer it of course.”

He stopped still and she had to stop as well, they were on the middle of the heath, surrounded by flat grass in every direction. Stephan looked at her beautiful face, at his hand in hers, and said.

“ Lets sit.” 

They sat. And when they were sitting they looked at each other, he looked into Anna’s eyes and she answered his look, she didn’t move her eyes. 

Stephan held out his arm and waved his hand at a crow that was hopping along on the plump grass a few feet away. The crow did a big hop and landed on his hand, he held it out so that it could spread its wings and settle, The crow looked at him and he looked at it, with a finger from his free hand he stroked the crow underneath its beak. It cawed and watched him, stared at his hands, at his eyes. 

Smiling and looking at the crow but not at her he started to speak:

They found me in a ditch a long time ago, I  was lying on a pile of bodies. The army from here had got to the pit just as the bulldozers were getting ready. So I heard anyway. I remember nothing. Nothing. I woke and saw a soldiers face, he was speaking but I couldn’t hear. 

I was covered in blood, some was mine but it was mostly other peoples. All those underneath me. I had been shot, they said, and stabbed. They fixed me and gave me asylum here. That is the day of my birth.

Two years later I had a visit, the people from the Hague had been investigating my case. He said that they had shown my photo to many survivors of the atrocities. I was not a victim, I was a torturer. The people beneath me in the pit were my victims. Then they dug further, took statements from the already convicted, listened to stories in balkan bars. 

I was taken from a village and conscripted into the militia where I was given a rifle and told to fight. And I fought. They say I was good at it. If you can be called good at that dirty business. They made me a guard in a camp. One day, so the informants say, I was taken into a cell and told to apply electric shocks to someone lying on a table. I refused. They insisted and I kept on refusing until they put me on the table. 

It took three days they said. 

Three days with electrodes and blades.

I gave in, then it was me doing the dirty work. Making others pay with pain for fictious crimes. Just for fun, in the end. 

Then as your army closed in they fled, after killing the ones left in the camp. They shot and stabbed me because they thought I might talk. Then they ran to their homes. And I was found.

But I remember nothing of any of it. The moment I was born was when I saw a soldiers face shouting at me. He had stubble. I couldn’t hear him. The man from the Hague who told me all this said that no further action would be taken. I was both guilty and innocent. He said that it was over. 

But I fear what will happen if I ever do remember. What will happen?

So if you ask me what made me you might as well ask this crow what made it.

And as he said those words he raised his hand and the crow flew off, straight up into the clear blue sky until it was gone. He bowed his head to the ground and was still. Anna leant over and ran her fingers over his jaw, his chin. She placed both hands on his cheeks and bending, kissed his head. Taking his hand in hers she rose and said.

“ Lets walk.” 

For K